Pick Your Poison - Thurs. April 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Pick Your
Poison: Medicine and Madness. This truly bizarre program of medical, psychoactive
and mental hygiene films features the campiest, most eye-poppingly lurid, informational and coldly clinical gems in the Archive that are sure to give us thanks for our own "sanity." Highlights include, Pain and Its Alleviation (1961) a drama-laden,
horror inspired mental hygiene film produced for the UCLA Nursing School; watch a tweaked
out Ohio teen talk about Quaaludes and other relaxants in Addictive Sopers (1978); learn about the effects of sedative hypnotics, opiates and opiods, stimulants, psychedelics and alcohol on the human body in Psychoactive (1976); and the classic mental hygiene film, with the prototypical
1950s cash register dad in Ulcer at Work (1957). Plus! Patient Porky Pig visits the
hospital in this 1940s WB cartoon.

It would take a colleague of horror/gore maestro Hershel Gordon
Lewis like Ivo Kantor to edit a film described in educational films guides like
this:

“Discusses the complexity of the pain phenomenon and the role of
nursing in providing help and comfort on a professional level. Variations in
responses to pain are indicated and the causes of pain suggested. Designed as
an incentive film to stimulate independent study and research.”

In actuality “Pain” is a drama-laden, horror inspired mental
hygiene film produced for the UCLA Nursing School with an over-the-top jazz
score by Sam Weiss. Watch nurses comfort and medicate nut-job neurotics and car
crash victims in their hospital beds.
Don’t miss the last vignette with its “shocking” and hilarious ending.

Addictive Sopers (Color, 1978)

Watch a tweaked out Ohio teen talk
about Quaaludes and other relaxants as men in suits warn about the dangers of
“Sopers”. The drug companies remain mum while a ski masked user comes clean on
camera. Only in Ohio!

Psychoactive (Color, 1976)

This well-made educational film
features ex KRON TV News anchor Evan White (in his polyester shirt, bushy hair
and ‘stash) narrating and demonstrating the effects of psychoactive drugs on
the systems of the human body. Drugs include sedative hypnotics, opiates and
opiods, stimulants, psychedelics and alcohol. It’s good to see rock impresario
Bill Graham educate us as he talks about how people think they are buying THC
are really getting “cheated” when they’ve actually bought PCP! Thanks for the
warning, Bill! Shot in San Francisco with a montage and voice over intro by
comic provocateur George Carlin.

Ulcer at Work (B+W, 1957)

Sourpuss executive and browbeating
bruiser Steve Hall is the prototypical 1950s cash register dad with his
shopaholic wife and materialistic kids. His stress level at home and at work is
at an all-time high. Doc Olmstead tells Steve his stomach is being eaten away
by hydrochloric acid. It’s all caused by the “wrong kind of feelings.” When Steve-o
shifts his need for self esteem from work to home and starts spending time with
the family he’s back in the driver’s seat. A classic mental hygiene film.

Patient Porky (B+W, 1940)

After eating too much birthday cake,
Porky Pig visits the hospital. Instead of seeing a doctor, a conniving cat
poses as physician, and conducts a fake surgery to filet poor Porky.